In October, my boyfriend and I went to San Francisco during covid to celebrate our 3 year anniversary. We stayed in San Anselmo and primarily visited Point Reyes during our time in California, but we decided to visit San Francisco for the day because it was only half an hour away from our AirBnB. We made sure to travel with lots of extra masks, hand sanitizer, and wipes to keep us safe during the pandemic. Here’s some safe and unique places to visit in San Francisco during covid:

The Painted Ladies

I first saw the Painted Ladies on my friend @allthatjazz’s Instagram page and immediately added the location to our itinerary. The Painted Ladies are a set of Victorian style homes built between 1892-1896 by Matthew Kavanaugh. You’ve probably seen these colorful houses on the front of postcards of San Francisco.

There is a beautiful park across from the Painted Ladies with stunning views of the city. Since Cullen and I visited San Francisco during the pandemic, the city felt much quieter than our past trips. This park is not very crowded so it is very easy to stay socially distanced from others. We got Blue Bottle coffee and some take out from a local restaurant to enjoy in this lovely park. I love the skyline view of the city over the Painted Ladies!

Golden Gate Park

Golden gate park is home to fantastic gardens and activities. The park stretches across 1,000 acres so there is plenty of scenery to explore. While there are many cool places to visit inside the park like the botanical garden and conservatory of flowers, you can walk around the park and it’s many lakes for free. We saw lots of beautiful plants and a hawk (maybe it was a falcon idk) while we were just wandering around for free.

While we were in Golden gate park, we visited the Japanese Tea Garden. The tea garden was a bit disappointing; I would not recommend going there. We paid $18 for entry ($9 per non-resident) and I felt like it was a waste of money. The garden was really pretty, but it only took about 20 minutes to go through the whole garden. We did drink tea in the little shop, but I’ve had better tea in Chinatown. The Japanese Tea Garden was just an overpriced tourist trap. I loved the scenery we saw walking through Golden Gate Park for free more than paying for entry into the Japanese Tea Garden.

Baker’s Beach

While browsing through some of the books we found in our AirBnB in San Anselmo, we found Baker’s Beach in a book called “San Francisco on Instagram”. Baker’s beach has an amazing view of the Golden Gate bridge. The locals seem to adore the beach as well.

This would be a great place to take a picnic lunch or watch the sun go down. It was pretty easy to stay socially distanced from others. The weather was so beautiful while we were there in October and there were actually a few people swimming. In general, San Francisco is typically too chilly for swimming in the ocean.

The only odd thing about this beach is that the portion closest to the bridge seemed to be the nude section lol! We had no idea that that part of the beach was naked until we started walking that direction for pictures and we saw some things we did not want to see lol! If that’s your vibe, you do you! Next time I go to Baker’s beach, we will stick to the 90% of the beach that’s clothed and we won’t try to venture closer to the bridge. 

California is currently on lockdown, but I wanted to share these cool spots to visit when California reopens. I will definitely revisit these places on future visits post-pandemic because they were such serene locations within the city! 

I hope you enjoyed seeing and learning about these cool places to visit in San Francisco during covid! Have you ever been to San Francisco?